Andy Renard Artworkhttp://www.andyrenardartwork.com
Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.Thu, 08 Feb 2018 07:47:47 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.4128322291Sex & Sexuality in the 19th Centuryhttp://www.andyrenardartwork.com/sex-sexuality-19th-century/
http://www.andyrenardartwork.com/sex-sexuality-19th-century/#respondThu, 08 Feb 2018 07:47:47 +0000http://www.andyrenardartwork.com/?p=180Sex & Sexuality in the 19th Century Male anxieties in relation to both physical and mental health in the Victorian era often seem to have concentrated on the supposedly baleful effects of masturbation, which was alleged to cause a wide range of physical and mental disorders, and on venereal diseases, especially syphilis. This brings us …

Male anxieties in relation to both physical and mental health in the Victorian era often seem to have concentrated on the supposedly baleful effects of masturbation, which was alleged to cause a wide range of physical and mental disorders, and on venereal diseases, especially syphilis. This brings us neatly into the subject of Victorian sexuality, which has been a continuing topic of debate and fascination.

According to their own testimonies, many people born in the Victorian age were both factually uninformed and emotionally frigid about sexual matters. Historically, it appeared that the licentious behavior and attitudes of the Regency period had been replaced by a new order of puritan control and repression – personified by the censorious figure of Mrs Grundy – which was imposed by the newly dominant bourgeoisie, steadily permeated all classes, and lasted well into the 20th century. Then a hypocritical ‘shadow side’ to this public denial was glimpsed, in the ‘secret world’ of Victorian prostitution and pornography, and more openly in the ‘naughty nineties’. These perspectives were contested by the French scholar Michel Foucault (reminding us that Victorian attitudes were not confined to Britain), who argued that sex was not censored but subject to obsessive discussion as a central discourse of power, bent on regulation rather than suppression. This helps explain why sexuality looms so large in art and medicine, for example, as well as in studies of the Victorian age.

Lately, evidence has shown that Victorian sex was not polarised between female distaste (‘Lie back and think of England’, as one mother is famously said to have counseled her anxious, newly married daughter) and extra-marital male indulgence. Instead many couples seem to have enjoyed mutual pleasure in what is now seen as a normal, modern manner. The picture is occluded however by the variety of attitudes that exist at any given time, and by individuals’ undoubted reticence, so that information on actual experience is often inferred from demographic and divorce court records. Certainly, the 1860s were briefly as ‘permissive’ as the same decade in the 20th century, while the 1890s saw an explosion of differing and conflicting positions. Throughout, however, the public discussion of sexual matters was characterized by the absence of plain speaking, with consequent ignorance, embarrassment, and fear.

By mid-century, the Victorian conjunction of moralism and scientific investigation produced ideas of orthodox human sexuality based on a combination of social and biological ideas. Popularly expressed, this amounted to ‘Hogamus higamus, men are polygamous/Higamus hogamus, women are monogamous’, with the added detail that ‘the majority of women (happily for them) are not very much troubled by sexual feeling of any kind. What men are habitually, women are only exceptionally.’

In order to curb men’s habitual urges, and in response to Malthusian predictions that population increase would inevitably outstrip food resources, early Victorian social moralists proposed and to some extent imposed a socio-medical discourse based on masculine self-control in support of the bourgeois ideal of domestic life. ‘A patriarchal culture which prizes eternal self-vigilance as the key to manliness, moral worth and material success’ then projected its sexual anxieties on to its subordinates:’ women, children, the lower classes and other nations.’ In line with the physiological idea of the body as a closed system of energy, male sexual ‘expenditure’ and especially ‘excess’ (spermatorrhea) were said to cause enfeeblement. Thus it was seriously held, for example, that sexual appetite was incompatible with mental distinction and that procreation impaired artistic genius. Men were vigorously counseled to conserve vital health by avoiding fornication, masturbation and nocturnal emissions (for which a variety of devices were invented) and by rationing sex within marriage. Even when other causes were present, sickness and debility were frequently ascribed to masturbation – the great erotic subject described as vigorously as it was denounced. ‘That insanity arises from masturbation is now beyond a doubt’, declared one widely read authority, who also claimed that ‘masturbators’ became withdrawn, flabby, pale, self-mutilating and consumptive. Ailments afflicting adolescent girls were similarly said to signify abnormal sexual excitation. With punitive therapy in mind, some doctors erased sexual pleasure through barbaric practices such as penile cauterization and clitoridectomy.

]]>http://www.andyrenardartwork.com/sex-sexuality-19th-century/feed/0180We are movinghttp://www.andyrenardartwork.com/we-are-moving/
http://www.andyrenardartwork.com/we-are-moving/#respondThu, 25 Jan 2018 05:28:11 +0000http://www.andyrenardartwork.com/?p=171We are moving this site to a new domain. Please visit: www.andyrenard.se //

]]>http://www.andyrenardartwork.com/we-are-moving/feed/0171The Human Cuthttp://www.andyrenardartwork.com/the-human-cut/
http://www.andyrenardartwork.com/the-human-cut/#respondFri, 26 May 2017 12:51:22 +0000http://andyrenardartwork.com/?p=159Free range, organic and extra tender meat from happy men. All our men have at least 9 square feet space per individual and they have access to an outdoor area when the weather conditions allow it. The fact that our men are happy all the way from birth to the slaughterhouse is important to us …

]]>Free range, organic and extra tender meat from happy men. All our men have at least 9 square feet space per individual and they have access to an outdoor area when the weather conditions allow it.Cutting Human. Artwork by: Andy Renard.

The fact that our men are happy all the way from birth to the slaughterhouse is important to us as it affects the quality of the meat. All our men are castrated because they will not have to experience the problems that masculinity can bring, but also because the meat will be extra juicy.
We do not usually breed women because they do not deliver the same quality of meat as men but before holidays such as Easter, we always have a large stock of young girls. Our best quality around Easter is children who are only two to six months old. Religious holiday? We always have a small stock of infants for this happening, Call us for price!

]]>http://www.andyrenardartwork.com/the-human-cut/feed/0159Näcken – The Nixhttp://www.andyrenardartwork.com/nacken-the-nix/
http://www.andyrenardartwork.com/nacken-the-nix/#respondWed, 10 May 2017 19:00:54 +0000http://andyrenardartwork.com/?p=138Näcken (Neck, Nicor, Nixie or Nokken) are shapeshifting water spirits in Germanic and Norse mythology and folklore. In Scandinavia usually appeared in the form of a young and pretty handsome man. With his beautiful music play, usually on a viola, and wonderful singing he seduces people to come to him into the stream and drown. Some …

]]>Näcken (Neck, Nicor, Nixie or Nokken) are shapeshifting water spirits in Germanic and Norse mythology and folklore. In Scandinavia usually appeared in the form of a young and pretty handsome man.The Nix (Näcken) seduce a young woman.

With his beautiful music play, usually on a viola, and wonderful singing he seduces people to come to him into the stream and drown.

Some people try to take advantage of him.
They bring him a treat of;

three drops of blood,

a black animal,

some “brännvin” (Scandinavian vodka) or “snus” (wet snuff).

All dropped into the water, he would then teach them his enchanting form of music.

Even though he teaches them and they can become very prominent musicians, they will somehow, sooner or later, suffer from his evil.

Common disorders include alcoholism, drug abuse, psychological illness, depression and even suicide and death.

Despite its only about nine million citizens, Sweden is world-leading in modern music. Could there be a connection?

Usually, you can swim safely in Sweden’s thousands of lakes and rivers, but you should be extra careful on Thursdays and especially on Midsummer’s Eve. Then Näcken is extra active.

If you run into him, you may try to break his spell by throwing a piece of steel in the water between him and yourself. If that does not work, you can just hope your luck that you will survive the encounter.

Brother Fabian’s Manuscript

Where by the marishes boometh the bittern,
Neckar the soulless one sits with his ghittern.
Sits inconsolable, friendless and foeless.
Waiting his destiny, Neckar the soulless.

Poem by; Sebastian Evans

In Encyclopædia Britannica they have a not so similar description of the Nix as a German (not Germanic) mythological being. Nix.

]]>http://www.andyrenardartwork.com/nacken-the-nix/feed/0138Mara – Marehttp://www.andyrenardartwork.com/mara-mare/
http://www.andyrenardartwork.com/mara-mare/#respondSat, 06 May 2017 16:26:01 +0000http://andyrenardartwork.com/?p=114A female Mare riding on a sleeping man’s chest. A mare sneaks upon a sleeping person and riding on their chest. The victim may get nightmares and be infected by various diseases. The Mare also ride horses during the night, and leave them exhausted, covered in sweat by the morning. The first known documentation of a …

A mare sneaks upon a sleeping person and riding on their chest. The victim may get nightmares and be infected by various diseases.

A female Mare riding on a sleeping man’s chest.

The Mare also ride horses during the night, and leave them exhausted, covered in sweat by the morning.

The first known documentation of a Mare is in the Norse book ”Ynglinga saga”

King Vanlandi Sveigðisson of Uppsala lost his life to a nightmare (mara) conjured by the Finnish sorceress Huld or Hulda, hired by the king’s abandoned wife Drífa. The king had broken his promise to return within three years, and after ten years had elapsed the wife engaged the sorceress to either lure the king back to her, or failing that, to assassinate him. Vanlandi had scarcely gone to sleep when he complained that the nightmare “rode him;” when the men held the king’s head the it “trod on his legs” on the point of breaking, and when the retinue then “seized his feet” the creature fatally “pressed down on his head.”

According to the Vatnsdæla saga, Thorkel Silver (Þorkell Silfri) has a dream about riding a red horse that barely touched the ground, which he interpreted as a positive omen, but his wife disagreed, explaining that a mare signified a man’s fetch (fylgja), and that the red color boded bloodiness. This association of the nightmare with fetch is thought to be of late origin, an interpolation in the text dating to circa 1300, with the text exhibiting a “confounding of the words marr and mara.”

]]>http://www.andyrenardartwork.com/mara-mare/feed/0114Wood Elveshttp://www.andyrenardartwork.com/wood-elves/
http://www.andyrenardartwork.com/wood-elves/#respondSat, 06 May 2017 07:40:33 +0000http://andyrenardartwork.com/?p=105Wood Elves hunters in a foggy pine forest. Most people may know Elves from Tolkien’s world or computer games like World of Warcraft but in Scandinavia, they are a reality. An Elf (or in plural: Elves) is a type of being in Germanic and Norse mythology and folklore. The Elves may have followed the Vikings …

Most people may know Elves from Tolkien’s world or computer games like World of Warcraft but in Scandinavia, they are a reality.

Wood Elves hunters in a foggy pine forest.

An Elf (or in plural: Elves) is a type of being in Germanic and Norse mythology and folklore. The Elves may have followed the Vikings to England but I’m unsure if they still live there.

In the Swedish language, they are named Alver and should not be mistaken for Älvor.

In Sweden, Norway and Germany observations of Elves differ so much so it’s hard to say if it is the same race.

This illustration shows my first meeting with the Wood Elves. In summer 2014 I was camping in the woods of Västmanland in Sweden and making some coffee on my campfire when suddenly two strange persons came riding. They talked a language I never heard before but I understood that it was some kind of danger they tried to tell me about.

After just a few seconds they disappeared. But I was stunned for a minute or two. You can´t look directly to an Elf of the opposite gender (may depend on your sexual orientation) without being stunned by love.

She was so beautiful that there is no word in any human language to explain it.

Anyway, when they rode away my admiration was cold down a little and I understood that I had to leave.

An hour later back in my car I heard on the radio that the worst wildfire in 40 years broke out in that area.

The Elves saved my life!

If I´m still in love with her?

So far I have returned to the forest of Västmanland 23 times to find her.

]]>http://www.andyrenardartwork.com/wood-elves/feed/0105Not alone in the darkhttp://www.andyrenardartwork.com/not-alone-dark/
http://www.andyrenardartwork.com/not-alone-dark/#respondMon, 01 May 2017 18:47:05 +0000http://andyrenardartwork.com/?p=96A beautiful young woman, dressed in just a sexy negligee, is exploring the cellar in the abandoned house with only a candle as the light source! Demons and other monsters are lurking in the shadows around her. Does it sound like a bad horror VHS tape from the 90s? Yes, I know – but it …

]]>http://www.andyrenardartwork.com/not-alone-dark/feed/096Gefjon – The Viking goddesshttp://www.andyrenardartwork.com/gefjon-viking-goddess/
http://www.andyrenardartwork.com/gefjon-viking-goddess/#respondMon, 01 May 2017 15:11:05 +0000http://andyrenardartwork.com/?p=88Gefjon were a goddess of Nordic mythology. She was the goddess of fertility and. Even though she was hardly any virgin, she was the protector of the women who died as a virgin. The women who die unmarried come to her. Her task is to serve the virgin that died without experiencing a love act. …

]]>Gefjon were a goddess of Nordic mythology. She was the goddess of fertility and. Even though she was hardly any virgin, she was the protector of the women who died as a virgin.

The women who die unmarried come to her. Her task is to serve the virgin that died without experiencing a love act.

Gefjon should have lived together with Odens son Skjøld. Oden commanded her to get more land whereupon she gave up to the Swedish King Gylfe who promised her as much land as she could plow in one day.

With or without Skjøld’s knowledge, she went to the hometown of the giants, ”Jättehem”, where she became pregnant and born four giant sons. When the sons were grown up, she turned them into oxen. Together with them, she returned to King Gylfe, buckled his sons in front of a plow, and began to plow.

They plowed up a large area, the soil was carried away by giants and the area was then filled with water that created Mälaren (Sweden’s third largest lake).

With the landmasses that the giants took away, they created the island of Zealand in Denmark.

]]>http://www.andyrenardartwork.com/gefjon-viking-goddess/feed/088Hello world!http://www.andyrenardartwork.com/hello-world/
http://www.andyrenardartwork.com/hello-world/#commentsMon, 01 May 2017 08:13:35 +0000http://www.andyrenardartwork.com/?p=1Wellcome to my new web page! Founded today, May 1, 2017, I open it with a short poem I found on the Internet. I am an artist. My definition of art is creating something with my hands that is an expression of who I am. Art is a part of me. I can’t escape the …